UNDERWORLD
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: If a vampire loves a werewolf, where can
they set up housekeeping together? Nowhere. At
least not in a world where werewolves and vampires
have fought for a thousand years. Kate Beckinsale
plays a vampire Death Dealer who is a ruthless
werewolf killer and who discovers that her new love
interest is from the other camp. But really she
has to stop a sort of coup to take over the vampires.
This is a film of non-stop action and non-start
intelligence. Lots of gunplay and the look of THE
MATRIX borrowed for another realm. Rating: 4
(0 to 10), low 0 (-4 to +4)
UNDERWORLD is a mass of contradictions. That is not necessarily a
bad thing in a film. Some very good films are paradoxical.
UNDERWORLD actually could be paradoxical if it was better done,
but it is just poorly thought out. This film seems like one long
violence episode and the violence is not even very well done. It
seems that the vampires and the werewolves have been at each
other's throats for nearly a thousand years. Unbeknownst to us in
the real world there is a population of vampires and a population
of werewolves and they are at war with each other. It does not
really matter a whole lot to the plot that they are vampires and
werewolves. With a little rewriting they could easily be two
rival street gangs, or Stalinists and Trotskyites. But then there
would not be so much use for the gore makeup and the CGI effects.
The beasties do very little chewing of each other preferring to
use automatic weapons on each other. There are a lot of automatic
weapons in this movie. There is the frequent staccato of
gunfights so totally lacking in 1930s vampire films.
Kate Beckinsale plays Selene, a beautiful vampire who wears these
skin-tight leather outfits. This is the same Kate Beckinsale who
played the comely nurse in PEARL HARBOR. Apparently she could not
resist the urge to play an action hero. She is a "Death Dealer"
which means she earns her daily blood by hunting down werewolves
in a war of attrition between the two armies of monsters. Selene
has to be very careful not to let the world of humans know of the
existence of these two armies in their midst so when she has a
wild gunfight on a subway she keeps everything very discrete in
some way not obvious to the viewer.
As sort of a sort of a secret agent in the war she sees something
that perks her curiosity. There is some strange behavior on the
part of the werewolves involving a human named Michael (Scott
Speedman). Michael is somehow involved in a strange plot
involving vampires and werewolves. (Are there any other kind of
plots involving vampires and werewolves?) The vampire Kraven
(Shane Brolly) wants rule all the vampires and is making deals
with (gasp) werewolves. Selene has to stop him. In the meantime
she is falling in love with the human Michael who may no longer be
human. The result may be the first love between a vampire and a
werewolf, like Romeo and Juliet, but without any sort of gentle
poetry. In fact there is not much in this film that is gentle.
Certainly nothing is gentle that can be made violent just like
nothing is quiet that can be loud. Just about everything is
overdone. The battles all have wirework and lots of gunfire. In
her battle to stop the evil Kraven (the name just sounds evils,
doesn't it?), Selene has a secret weapon. She can revive the
great ruling vampire, like the King of the Gypsies, to come to her
aid. This is Viktor (Bill Nighy of I CAPTURE THE CASTLE and the
upcoming LOVE ACTUALLY), an age-old vampire powerful but at the
same time decrepit.
About the best thing about UNDERWORLD is its production design and
art direction. The entire look of the film seems to imitate THE
MATRIX with dominant colors being black, gray, and steel blue.
Occasionally there is some muted red added because what is a
vampire film without blood. But the look of the film is far
better than the script. Many scenes are staged for visual
excitement but not logic. Selene will be running and from nowhere
a fist will sock her on the snoot. Then you will see that it is
from an enemy that she should have been able to see from across
the room, but then there would not have been the exciting scene.
One of my pet peeves from BLADE holds true here. The vampires
seem to be vampires by virtue of a special blood type. The same
goes for the werewolves. That would be okay if they were purely
scientific creatures, but they both have supernatural powers.
There are scenes of both running upside-down on the ceiling. That
is a supernatural power and could not possibly come from a blood
type. The writers should decide if their vampires are
supernatural or preternatural and not confuse the two.
The nice thing about this film is you are never more than five
minutes away from the big dramatic or action scene. If you go out
for popcorn you will miss it. But don't worry, there will be
another one along in another five minutes. And none of these
scenes will be clear in your mind in two hours. I give UNDERWORLD
a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2003 Mark R. Leeper
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X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1200041
X-RT-TitleID: 1125642
X-RT-AuthorID: 1309
X-RT-RatingText: 4/10
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